Wilhelm Erb's years in Leipzig (1880-1883) and their impact on the history of neurology.

BACKGROUND

Between 1880 and 1883, the famous German neurologist Wilhelm Erb was appointed Professor of Special Pathology at Leipzig University and Head of the Medical Outpatient Department.

SUMMARY: Besides the favourable clinical conditions, it was first and foremost the access to large numbers of patients that enabled him to both establish a new, juvenile form of progressive muscular atrophy and to classify various forms of muscular atrophies already discovered into a new clinical entity which he called dystrophia muscularis progressiva.

KEY MESSAGES: His summarising these different forms of muscular atrophies into one group is the most long-lasting outcome of Erb's years in Leipzig. The access to large numbers of different patients at the Medical Outpatient Department, on the one hand, and the dynamics of Leipzig's neurosciences, in particular the so-called 'Leipzig Nervous Circle', on the other, had a lasting impact on Erb and definitely gave him other valuable insights, such as the thought that tabes dorsalis must have been caused by a syphilitic infection.